


you don’t know what it feels like (to fall in love with you)

by summerssnow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi, but mostly it’s Gendry/Arya and supporting cast so, does it all really matter?, modern!westeros au, there are a lot of characters that will come and go i suppose, warnings for death - abuse of substances - mentions of emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-02-10 09:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18657535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerssnow/pseuds/summerssnow
Summary: Sometimes, people leave.And when they go they leave you with a hole in your heart and without your favorite shirt, the one you bought the same day you met them. Maybe they’ll leave the lunch they made for work two days earlier that they forgot to take along, or they’ll leave you with a million photographs so that you can never forget their face, because it’s too difficult to take down the frames and hide them away as if that person had never existed. Even if you wish they had been a dream.Sometimes, people leave.But sometimes they come back, only to ruin you all over again.





	1. i n t r o .

**Author's Note:**

> excuse me and my lack of editing but i’ve been awake for 48 hours and don’t feel like editing but also if i don’t post this first introduction chapter now then i probably will never do it, so there’s that. i’ll come back and do it once i’ve slept. probably.

There was a moment — just one moment in time — in which he blissfully forgot where he was and what he was doing there. What he’d done mere minutes before. A poke in the thigh and a toothless smile from the black haired toddler had his lips turning upwards slightly, and it felt natural. But only for a moment until Mya came into view with her long black dress and her short black hair tied back in a tight bun, her eyes wet and makeup ruined as she searched for her son.

The sight was enough to pull him back to reality, the smile slipping from his face even as he reached down to pick his nephew off the ground. 

Bella sat not far from him, her arms wrapped around their youngest sister Barra, whose eyes told of even more sorrow than he’d witnessed in Mya’s. Even from a fair distance, he could see where the rivers of tears had tracked down her cheeks, her eyes red and puffy and not at all taking in the sights around her.

Gendry understood all too well. His own eyes itched from the tears he’d tried so hard not to cry. He wanted to go to her and comfort her; he was her big brother, he should be there for her. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to move. He didn’t know how to make any of it less painful for her, and feared that trying would serve only to make things worse.

His head was still half in a daze, as it had been for the better part of a week.

He wondered what it would be like when he realized this was his reality, for true. He feared it. Feared the storm he felt coming on, hiding just around the corner.

Perhaps that was why he had stayed, the reason he hadn’t yet run away like he had so desperately wanted to while he walked toward the grave where they had laid his brother to rest and while everyone walked by him with empty condolences falling from their lips. Sometimes they meant them, sometimes they were just words.

But whether the words were meant to comfort or just for something to say didn’t matter, ‘cause no amount of  _ “I’m sorry for your loss”  _ ‘s would bring his brother back or fix the shattered pieces that sat inside his chest. No amount of healing words would fill the empty space that had formed in the close-knit group of half-siblings who couldn’t seem to stitch themselves back together just then.

Except Mya, because that was what she did, hold everyone together. Even when she was breaking. Even while she was pulling her son from Gendry’s arms and whispering in her brother’s ear with a voice that crackled like a thin layer of ice to tell him to go and get some fresh air. “You look like you’re about to collapse, Gen,” she added, her voice tender and worried.

_ I’ll be fine _ , he wanted to tell her. 

Instead, he found himself nodding numbly before he made his way out of her living area and to the backyard, where everything wasn’t pressing in on him and he could  _ breathe _ just a little easier despite the noises and smells of King’s Landing pressing in around him. Those were familiar, at least. He preferred the sound of far away car horns and shouting far more than the soft, somber tones that awaited him within his sister’s home. 

He liked the fact that Lommy was waiting for him, holding a cigarette in his direction without avoiding eyes or trying to make  _ meaningful _ eye contact like every well-meaning person had been doing for the previous six days. It was too much.

He was just _so_ _tired_ of it all. 

(He was tired, period; sleep had not been easy to come by since Bella had shown up at his door at four in the morning to bring him to the emergency room. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was only part of the reason why everything had turned to a blur, though. He’d been sleepless many times in his life. This was different; a feeling he could not shake or put a word to, like the very foundation of what made him Gendry had been shaken and rocked as if he had been hit by an earthquake.)

He could see his brother’s face peeking out at him from Lommy’s shirt pocket, the color of faded sand draining the color and life from the picture of a man who had once been full to bursting with both. It made him feel weary and weak, and he turned to sit so that he didn’t have to see the picture staring back at him any longer. The lingering feeling of being watched stuck to his very skin, but he knew the eyes could see nothing. Not any longer. Not since the night his car had been found flipped over in the ditch.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there with only Lommy and silence as company, but before long the cigarette was burning hot between his fingers, and he put it out in the dirt beside him and flicked the butt toward the garbage can at the same time that the black door opened, revealing a tall man with a long face dressed in his best clothes. 

Gendry stood automatically as the man made his way toward him, welcoming the short hug and pat on the shoulder that he was given. The man stepped back a long moment later and assessed him with hard grey eyes, “Have you been eating?”

Had it been anyone else asking the question, Gendry would have simply shrugged his shoulders and waited for them to move on, but that was something he couldn’t get away with doing when it came to Ned Stark. “Some,” he answered honestly, “haven’t been that hungry.”

“I know,” the man said— and because Gendry knew that Ned  _ did _ know all too well, he knew these weren’t just words. And it did help coming from him, where it hadn’t coming from anyone else. Patting him once again on the shoulder, he continued, “but you should eat, anyway. You too, Lommy. We’ll sneak in for a minute. You both look like you could use a strong drink.”

Blessedly, most of the guests had either left or dispersed into different rooms of the house after the initial feeding frenzy, so there were only a few people milling around in the kitchen. Hot Pie was the first person his eyes fell to, the one person he would expect to be in the kitchen the entire time due to being the cook and having self-appointed himself the one in charge of it for the day. Gendry was glad for his presence. As annoying as Hot Pie could sometimes be, it was nice to see a friendly face waiting for him inside. Even if the reason he was being extra friendly and animated despite the circumstances wasn’t quite as welcome.

Not because the dark hair and grey eyes of the short woman standing opposite Hot Pie at the counter was someone he particularly disliked or didn’t want around — it was quite the opposite most of the time. Having her around had always been a welcome thing for him; it was the fact that she seldom was that made his chest constrict.

It was the fact that he hadn’t seen her in nearly two years until four days earlier that made him avoid the counter where she was standing with Hot Pie and leave the room with a plate half full of food in one hand and a large, stiff drink in the other without having said a single word.


	2. o n e .

_ “Would you please stop that?” _

_ Arya looked up from the open book that was resting in her lap, her lips pulling up in a mischievous smile, “Doing what?” _

_ “Snapping your gum,” he snipped, “you said you wanted to learn how to change oil in a car, but you’re just sitting there being a nuisance with your gum and your finger tapping.” _

_ “I  _ said  _ that I wanted to come along to keep you company. And you didn’t tell me that you were actually doing the oil change or I would have been over there being a  _ nuisance  _ instead of sitting here being bored, stupid.” _

_ Gendry huffed. Since she’d arrived from Winterfell the week before, she’d been tagging along with him to the shop every day to pass the time. Unlike the majority of her family, she didn’t have all that many friends she cared to hang out with in King's Landing, and those that she did want to see were usually busy during the day. So she’d chosen him to bother this summer instead of following her father around like she had in years past. _

_ In truth, he didn’t mind so much. Despite the fact that she was a thirteen year old girl, he enjoyed her company for the most part. Arya had always been one of his favorites of the Starks — a feat, really, considering that he had a very dear place in his life for the Stark family as a whole — even when she’d been a young, knotty-haired child chasing everyone around with sticks and intruding on the older kids’ games. _

_ But they’d both been in a foul mood when they’d met up that morning, so it hadn’t been a fun afternoon in one another’s company.  _

_ Arya went back to the book she’d brought along with her, and though he tried not to pay much attention, he couldn’t help but note that the pages didn’t seem to be turning as quickly as they had been before. _

_ A few minutes passed before either of them spoke again. “What are you doing for your birthday?”  _

_ He shrugged and pushed himself the rest of the way out from underneath Mya’s car, “I’m not sure. Nothing, probably. Jon, Robb and Mya all have to work, and Bella’s headed off with some friends for the weekend, so I’ll probably be here or sleeping through the majority of it.” _

_ “That’s lame.” _

_ “I’m good with lame.” _

_ She leveled him with an unamused look, “Har har. But seriously Gendry, it’s your birthday. You should do something.” _

_ “Maybe I don’t want to do anything.” _

_ She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before nodding, “You’re gonna do something. I’ve decided.” _

_ And though he protested and told her that there was nothing fun to be done for turning nineteen anyway, she still showed up at the shop three days later with her father, his father, Bran, Rickon, Sansa and Barra in tow, to celebrate with cake and ice cream and a very intense  _ go fish _ tournament, which Bran had won “fair and square.” It had been a little lame still, in truth, but he’d enjoyed every minute of it. _

_ Years later they’d done the same sort of celebration for her nineteenth birthday complete with the  _ go fish _ tournament despite the younger kids actually being old enough to understand and enjoy a more complicated game, with Hot Pie and Lommy and almost the complete set of both of their families, and she’d admitted to him that, when she’d planned his celebration that year, it had been partially because she’d started developing a crush on him. By then, even he’d already figured that out. _

_ “Stupid,” she’d muttered when he’d told her as much, and she’d punched his shoulder before kissing him full in the mouth for everyone to see. _

—- —- —- —- —- —- 

His body ached.

It wasn’t the kind of ache that came from having too much to drink or falling down a flight of stairs. It felt similar to the way he felt when he didn’t go to the gym for a while and went back in it too hard, or the way it felt to be coming down sick when he was working himself too hard to stop and give himself rest. But it was different than that, too, because the ache wasn’t just in his muscles and his bones and crawling in his skin, it was punching along to the rhythm of his heartbeat and with every breath he took he could feel it there, never subsiding, never changing or easing away. It was as constant and relentless as the  _ fruuum fruuum  _ of the fan that was trying so hard and failing to bring him some cold air, much like his head was trying to find some peace within him.

But that was failing, too.

Gendry wasn’t the sort to shy away from a cry every now and then, but he’d never experienced an onset of such soul-wrenching, breath-catching sobs as he had as soon as he’d made it home and to his bed. Once he was alone, truly alone, everything he’d been holding in over the week leading up to that moment seemed to have broken free. When he no longer had to try to be the strong one for his sisters and he didn’t have to think about what needed to be taken care of and what casket they wanted and had he remembered to call out of work or does the obituary sound right and would he like to say a few words about Edric before they laid him in the ground.

It had caught up to him in a way he’d both feared and had never anticipated.

He and Edric had never been all that close as brothers, not in the way that he was with Mya or Bella, but as they’d gotten older their relationship had become one more similar to his with Hot Pie or Lommy. A friend, who just so happened to have the same father as him. His closest friend, at the end of the day.

He wondered if that was how Jon had felt when Robb had died. He hadn’t thought to ask; and even if he had, he didn’t know how he could possibly try to find the words to ask such a question. How to put everything into words evaded him.

Gendry had never been someone who was good with words. He supposed, though, that it was similar, if a bit opposite. Jon and Robb had been cousins who’d grown up as brothers while he and Edric had been brothers who’d grown up as friends that saw one another every so often in their youth, and more as they’d grown up. Maybe one day they could talk about it, when the time came when the pain wasn’t quite so paralyzing.

If that day ever came.

He could talk to Mya and Bella, of course, but it would be nice to be able to talk to someone else about it, too. To work through what he was going through with someone who had an idea of how to heal. If things were different, he could have talked to Arya. She was the one person he knew would listen, would understand and not judge; and she was the only person he truly wanted to talk to about it all.

But things weren’t different, so he pulled away from that thought before it could cause another ache he couldn’t possibly manage in that moment. 

The clock by his bed told him that it was half ten in the morning, and he wondered how much sleep he’d truly gotten. It didn’t feel like much, but it had to be close to a typical night’s sleep. He’d left Mya’s around midnight, had stayed long enough for Barra to fall asleep on his shoulder and have to carry her up to her room because he didn’t have the heart to wake her. Not when she was finally peaceful. He couldn’t find it in him to do that to her. To bring her back to their reality. Barra was strong— probably stronger than her three remaining elder siblings put together, in truth— but she was still only thirteen. He couldn’t do much to protect her from the situation, but he could give her a little bit of a respite. That would have to do.

A knock on his front door spurred him out of bed, groggy and pained as he might have been, and he quickly pulled a shirt over his bare chest to make him look at least a little bit presentable. Anyone who came to his door so early on a weekend couldn’t we’ll expect anything else. 

At first, when the door opened, he didn’t quite register who was waiting on the other side of it. His eyes seemed to refuse to focus, but once the person on the other side of the door touched his shoulder ever so slightly, everything seemed to slide into view. 

“Get dressed, Gendry. We’re having brunch.”

A demand it might have been, but there was a gentleness to his father’s voice that he hadn’t heard in many years, so almost without thinking, Gendry obeyed.

— —- —- —- —- —

It wasn’t until Gendry was twelve that he truly had any sort of real relationship with his father, and even then they’d never been close. But spending the summers with his siblings instead of the occasional weekend had changed things for him. Before then, he hardly had a relationship with his siblings at all, but after their first summer together, Gendry finally understood what Robb and Jon meant when they talked about their love for their siblings, even when they were annoyed with them. They were all in constant contact, despite the distances between them, and then one by one, they’d all moved closer to King’s Landing.

Without his siblings, Gendry had nothing. And so that was one thing he’d always been thankful to his father for, if nothing else.

Robert Baratheon would never win any Father of the Year awards, but he did what he could to provide for his children. He had always made sure that they’d all had everything they needed, that they never went hungry and that they always had clothes on their backs. When Gendry’s mom had up and disappeared, he’d taken full responsibility for his sixteen year old son and though he was out of his element being a father full time, he did what he could. He’d always stepped up when it had been demanded of him, at the very least.

Still, they didn’t have the sort of relationship where they randomly invited one another out. 

Their brunch was mostly quiet, but Gendry welcomed the silence. There was occasional chatter — when they would both be returning to work, what their plans were for the upcoming weeks, stories about things that had happened, that were happier than they had once been — but they never went too deep, never tried to touch on how they were feeling. That wasn’t how they were with one another. But Gendry understood what his father was attempting to do and appreciated the effort, as futile as it may have been. His father had even turned his phone off for the entire meal, which was the rarest thing about it all.

Once they’d eaten as much as they could possibly stomach, Robert had paid for their meals and they’d made their way back outside, his father turned to him and pulled him in for a hug. “If you need anything, anytime…”

Gendry nodded into his father’s shoulder, already sure that despite the opening to having a closer relationship, it was an offer he likely wouldn’t take. He didn’t know how, not with him. “You too,” he managed, at a loss for anything else to say. 

There was a long moment where neither said anything, before his father pulled back and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow at Mya’s, then.”

Gendry nodded once more and his father managed a small, strangled smile before turning and starting to walk away. He tried not to think about the wetness that had been in his father’s eyes before he’d turned to walk away, but it plagued him even as he started on his way home. He had only ever seen his father cry twice before; the day Barra was born and at the hospital when they as a family had been told that Edric was gone.

Somehow, the glistening in his eyes just then had been worse than the broken sobs Gendry had heard from his father when they’d received that news. 

He’d planned on doing his shopping, just for something to occupy his time, but he felt so exhausted that he decided to forego his errands for the day. It wasn’t a long walk back to his apartment from the restaurant, but by the time he turned onto his street he may as well have run a marathon. It was too hot outside with the southron sun shining down on him, and the ache within him was still far too prominent. He wanted nothing so much as he wanted to sleep.

His apartment wasn’t big, and it wasn’t particularly nice. The walls were patched and white, and there really wasn’t all that much to behold within it, either, but it was home and it was cool within, and the couch was comfortable and long enough for him to stretch out upon. That was all he needed, really.

He flopped unceremoniously down onto the couch and pulled a pillow out from between the couch and the wall for his comfort, closing his eyes and letting the bone-weary exhaustion take over.

Would everything normal feel like such a feat from then on? Was this to be his life? Constant exhaustion, constant aching? He hoped not.

But, he’d managed to survive when his mother had left, and again the day he had awoken to find Arya gone. He’d do it again if that’s what it took. Because that was what he did. He always somehow figured out how to survive even when it seemed impossible to do so.

It was all he’d ever really known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> allow me to get through a few short setup chapters before we get into the beef of all this.
> 
> next chapter, we’ll have some arya. for real.
> 
> thank you for your support, and thanks for reading!


End file.
